Last week, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) tweeted his angst over a recent U.S. delegation to North Korea. "(Former Gov.) Richardson and (Google CEO Eric ) Schmidt arrive in North Korea today-- Lenin used to call them 'useful idiots.'" The 2000 presidential candidate likened the two, who visited the hermit kingdom with the hopes of starting a dialogue, to the Western dissidents who were brought to the USSR to legitimize the communist regime. This reminded me of one of the stranger "useful idiots" in the history of the DPRK, PFC James Dresnok.

In 1962, Dresnok was on patrol in the DMZ when he had enough with life. He had no family back home and his wife of two years just asked for a divorce. He also was accused of forging documents and was facing a possible court marshal. So, he decided to walk across the minefield and surrender to North Korea.

The DPRK used Dresnok and three other American defectors as propaganda tools over the next three years. According to an interview in Crossing the Line, Dresnok claimed that they never felt welcomed by their hosts, and attempted to defect to the Soviet Union in 1965. They were promptly kicked out of the Soviet embassy and, consequently, taken to a re-education camp by their North Korean minders. Apparently, these idiots weren't as useful as they had thought.

By the 1970s, the Americans came to love (or fake their love for) North Korea. They starred in North Korean films (always playing the bad guy, of course) including one directed by none other than Kim Jong Il. This gave them a bit of notoriety in North Korean society, along with more food rations. (Dresnok says that they ate well during the famines of the 1990s.) Things were so good for the useful idiots that the government even kidnapped (or, introduced, as Dresnok maintains) wives for the four Americans.

Dresnok holds his glock gangsta style

Of the four useful idiots, only Dresnok remains in the DPRK. Two passed on decades ago and Charles Robert Jenkins moved to Japan by way of Indonesia and the United States. The story of Jenkins is an odd one. His wife was kidnapped from Japan but permitted to return after pressure from the Japanese government in the early 2000s. This highly publicized affair, coupled with encouragement from Japan, convinced the DPRK to allow Jenkins to visit with his wife and kids in Indonesia. Of course, Jenkins shouldn't have been trusted, because as soon as he landed he asked for political asylum. To make a long story short, he struck a deal with the US Army and served a thirty day sentence for desertion and now lives in Japan with his wife. Was he a useful idiot and, if so, to whom? Part of me likes to think that this was the longest covert mission ever and that it was Jenkins's plan all along to spend forty years behind enemy lines. On the other hand, listening to Dresnok leads me to believe that these guys were just useless idiots.